“Ah,” said the Intelligence Officer, “ I should be delighted.” With an unhurried grace he made his way across the room, and took a seat behind the console. With swipe of his finger he bought a holographic display live. The display focus at the eyes of its user and was just a blur of light to anyone else trying to read it. The terminal might have been displaying data, stress readouts, or it might just has easily have been a ploy to make them feel like they were less important than mundane work.

“Firstly my name is Major York,” he said in his tone of faux gentillity, smiling at them like a snake with particularly perfect teeth.

“You are here, because Mr Edwards and Captain Cykalii are wanted for the murder of a team Terran archaeologists about three years ago.

“What!?” Neil spluttered coming to his feet with a look of shock on his face. If York was discomforted or surprised by the reaction he gave no sigh.

“You mean that team of commandos you dropped on us back on Savran?!”

York cleared his throat delicately and turned the display into an omni-directional mode.The screen flashed into holographic images of Neil and Sayeeda with biographical notes in galactic including charges of murder and conspiracy. The photos ranged in quality, old photos from an I.D showed a younger Neil, and a twenty something Sayeeda Cyckali in an officer cadets uniform. More recent footage was of grainy poor quality recording equipment like helmet recorders and gun cams.

“Those would be the archaeologists yes,” the officer continued a note of wry amusement giving his voice a richer tone than before.

“The Directorate was very insistent you be picked up after the incident,” York continued, “You wouldn’t believe how much time and resources they spent coming space around Fornax for you. Of course you were off taking your little cryo nap at the time. Funny how the universe works.”

The console made a beeping sound and York looked down at something before brightening.

“You will be pleased to know that our surgical computer predicts that Captain Cyckali will make a complete recovery. She should be combat effective by the end of the day. Excellent news!”

“So you shot down all those ships and captured the Highlander to arrest them?” Taya asked, looking back and forth between Neil and York in confusion. York reached up and fiddled with his musache for a moment. Then he clicked a holographic key and the image zoomed in on the strange tattoo Neil had picked up from the Ancient artifact on Savran.

“I shot down all those ships and captured your freighter so that we could talk about this.”